


Constellated

by standbyme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-04
Updated: 2012-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-30 15:00:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/333009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standbyme/pseuds/standbyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Sam will never know how brightly their eyes appear by the light of Castiel’s stars – the millions of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Constellated

It isn’t easy to explain to people because they do not see as Castiel can see.

Dean will never know that the night sky is so laden, so fettered, so consistently bursting with light, that it could light the world a hundred times again. To Castiel there is no difference in day and dark – he sees too far, too wide, too long. Humans, with their low light sensitivity, will never know outside their telescopes how many stars bear down on them. For an angel there are no dark spaces, no differentiations. He finds no pictures, no constellations, just star upon star, crowding and immense and nearly blinding.

For Castiel the sky is a violent smear of burning modules – Milky Way, distinct to humans, stands only slightly raised from the rest, a ribbon of raised light so otherwise common Castiel has let himself not be bothered numerous times. He can watch each orbit, see their paths, and project their destinations. He sees each atom as it swells on Aldebaran’s shifting surface when he focuses there. He could see everything at once if he desired.

_The bull’s red eye_ , Sam says. He refers to Taurus, the pagan bull.

Castiel sees the red coat eating up everything, and one day, one day, in Castiel’s lifetime, if all were as it should be, he would watch that star shrink to the head of a pin for a brief moment. An explosion so large would follow it would send debris firing out in all directions – it would scatter it’s self in elemental dust. Aldebaran, once so selfish, once so consuming, could become a mother. She could nurse her children in her flames, gaseous and fervent, and expel them to the universe with the gift that they will one day return to her. Castiel, when he was a fledgling, heard Gabriel’s stories. The stories of their Father who folded stars to see how small he could get them, but they always came apart, they always resisted. All of them – they eventually do. Lucifer was a star – packed so tightly, only to spring open, violent, wild.

_Beautiful, ethereal, all that a star should be,_ designed _to be_ …

When Aldebaran ruptures, splits her skin, Castiel cannot see if the humans will be around, but if they are, they will herald it.

The humans would call it brilliant and Castiel, in the scheme of all things, would call it inconsequential.

He will feel it just the same, a tremor, the same as every star he’s ever felt. There are so many stars like Aldebaran, and humans will never count them all, but Castiel can.

“That one’s part of the Pleiades, right Sam?” Dean’s voice is thoughtful and Sam nods, sipping his beer. Dean points at a different star now, Aldebaran forgotten. His green eyes, burning with intelligence and curiosity fix on Castiel. He is trapped in their binary pull, gravitated. “You know those right, Cas? The seven sisters?”

Castiel is lost for a moment. He looks up, up at the stars that Dean indicates, seven, maps each. Their names ( _sacred and remembered, as every other star_ ) dance on his willing tongue. They do not stand out, not really. They are clustered tight among indeterminable numbers – unfathomable to Dean. Castiel’s eyes widen as he watches them.

Dean sees seven stars distinct; each so bright, so luminous, they have their own legends, their own names, their own mythos. Dean would have had to look up such things, and as Castiel hears his voice, dropped and murmuring, the three of them craning their heads back, Castiel watches each molecule of those stars.

“ _Alcyone, Atlas, Celaeno, Electra, Maia, Merope, Pliades…”_ Dean’s finger traces each, Sam listening with rapture, eyes wide.

Dean and Sam will never know how brightly their eyes appear by the light of Castiel’s stars – the millions of them.

Castiel thinks he sees them the way they see stars.

Unique among a million, pinpointed by darkness and mystery, and he draws constellations from their actions, from their love, from each movement of their chests, and it isn’t so hard to understand why Dean says each star, why Sam catalogues their seasonal patterns in the sky. Castiel shifts against the Impala’s dark frame. The boys are silent now, each a hemisphere of his own.

Castiel turns eyes back to the stars that paint no pictures for him, but light up everything.

Yes, it is clear, who holds Castiel’s adoration.

He traces the letter D absently against his palm.

He is content.


End file.
